1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to calender applications for small screen computers, such as hand held computers, and more particularly to techniques for efficient use of the small screen for such applications.
2. Description of Related Art
Small screen, hand held computers are gaining popularity, particularly for use as calendering tools. Hand held computers typically include an application program for scheduling and keeping track of appointments and other calendering functions. One popular hand held computer, sold under the trademark PalmPilot, by 3Com Corporation, includes a calendering program known as “Date Book”.
The small screen on such computers presents a problem for calendering programs, because it is often impossible to display an entire day's appointments at one time in a size that allows reading of text associated with the appointments. This problem of display size is amplified for hand held computers which utilize touch screens over the display for input. In computers using touch screens, each entry on the display maps to an object on the touch screen corresponding to the entry, and therefore the size of each entry must be sufficient for the touch screen to distinguish touches of one entry from another.
The typical prior art device uses display paging to provide sufficient size for each entry. That is, as the display for a given day exceeds the available room on the screen, the computer divides the day into pages, and displays one page at a time. While this paging approach is useful, and provides for effective calendering, it removes useful information about a single day's appointments from the screen, and makes use of the calendering program less efficient.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a technique supporting more efficient use of the display screen on small screen computers, particularly for applications using lists of timed items, like calendering programs having lists of appointments during a day.